According to the author, it is particularly up to Mesquita to publicly raise the SIP “against the socialist transformation in Chile and in solidarity with the largest voice of the Chilean press, which is under attack by the socialist government”.
“In addition to the InterAmerican Society, O Estado and O Globo had direct relationships with Mercurio through Latin, a news agency founded in 1970 in collaboration with several Latin American newspapers that began sharing content,” the book says.
Articles produced by the Chilean daily were translated and republished in Brazil and, in the author’s estimation, “a key sector of the Brazilian press became a sounding board for a daily that was involved in the early plans of the coup against Allende and financed by American espionage.” . “.
However, on the pages of newspapers such as O Estado, Mercurio appeared followed by the phrase “independent newspaper from Chile”. Or: “prestigious organ of the Chilean democratic press that is fighting for survival today”. The headlines about the daily’s fight against popular unity were “Allende restricts freedom”, “Press in Chile threatened”, “Chilean press fears for the future” and “Allende increases pressure on the entire free press”.
In a subsequent analysis, the CIA would credit its “Project Mercurio” with a “significant role” in the destruction of the Popular Unity Government.
The book also reveals how Mesquita wrote a letter to Allende attacking the “totalitarianization process” affecting Chile’s “free” newspapers. “Evidence of the siege were the government’s decisions to increase journalists’ salaries by 50% and price advertising. The measures would reduce press profits, Mesquita warned, perhaps even to the point of suffocation, he said.